Sound, a two dimensional media, is the virabration of air, the shape bouncing over the span of time. Moreover, sound is all about time. While images are slices of the world that is freezed and captured at specific moments, sound would make no sense if time is taken away from it. Sound intertwines with time from its essence.
Cassette is one of the physical carriers of sound, and also a piece of memory of the passed decades. Unlike CD or even digital mediums, the magnetic tape always travels in a linear way same as time. If played to the end, the tape must be rewind, and go back through every recorded moment.
Back in my childhood, English textbooks came with cassettes loaded with listening practices. Rewinding, replaying, and untangling tapes became part of my memory.
This work captures the physicality of this nostalgic memory, using thinly printed waveform as the tape, allowing it to be tangled. The fragile material also makes the viewer feel unsure while wanting to untangle the tapes. The white wheels were printed separately, so it can be spinned with fingers.
mobile device reacts to the embedded NFC tag
The cassette body has a embedded NFC tag. A mobile device tapping on it will be directed to an audio file, making it connected with a piece of audio as a real cassette.
The audio is a recording of the environment and my footstep during a 10 km walk in NYC, from the campus of Pratt Institute to the Times Square playing in reverse. Some electronic noise was captured and intentionally left in the piece.
The printed tape is 254 cm (100 in) long, corresponds to the waveform of the last 53.3 seconds of the audio. This ratio comes from the speed of cassette plays on, roughly 4.75 cm/second.
The hollowed shape comes from an interruption during test prints. The gcode file is then manually modified to remove all the solid infill sections to get the same result as aborting the printing process.
